


Chiaroscuro

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
Genre: Community: ladiesbingo, First Person, Missing Scene, Obsession, Other, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10102505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: When I dreamed, everything was dark, and it was as if she had never been gone.When I woke, the sunlight crawling over the foot of my bed, I knew the truth.(I couldn't help wondering about the new one, but it was no good. I could see that from the start. So could she.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Ladiesbingo prompt 'Film noir'

When I dreamed, everything was dark, and it was as if she had never been gone.

When I woke, the sunlight crawling over the foot of my bed, I knew the truth.

(I couldn't help wondering about the new one, but it was no good. I could see that from the start. So could she.)

*

She wasn't gone, you see. That was why I did it. Every day, I went to her room, and I dusted it, and I smoothed the coverlet on her bed. I would say, _she was coming back_ , but she had never left. She hadn't finished. I knew that.

This place is hers. Why would she leave it?

(She wanted to see. The new one, I mean. I found her, once, in _her_ room. Snooping around. I couldn't blame her for wanting to know. I would have shown her, but I was glad she hadn't asked. It would have been harder to hate her if she had.)

*

I heard her voice in the howling of the sea. Even when the sea was calm, when the moonlight fell across the dark water in a great pale stream, I heard her. Her footstep behind me, quick and light. Her voice, laughing, low.

I never turned around. I always knew there would be -

Nothing there.

Nothing there.

There was never anything there. Except her. She was always there.

She'd never gone, you see.

( _She_ knew. The other one. It didn't help her, though, did it?)

*

I hear her now.

I remember what it was like when I brushed her hair, twenty minutes together at a time. After she had it cut things were quicker, of course, but she was quite right. Better for riding, she said, and sailing.

She always was right. She knew her own mind, and it would never have occurred to her to do anything else. Of course it wouldn't.

(The new one tries to please everyone, and pleases nobody.)

*

This time, she is there in front of me. Her white dress; her dark hair. Her _hair..._

Her hair has grown out again. Of course it has. Streaming like seaweed... It used to fan out around her head like a halo, and her face glowed.

Not now. Not now...

I reach out and touch her. But surely the skin of her neck was never so cold under my fingertips. Surely her hair did not drip with salt water.

She is cold. So cold.

(The new one knows. Knows, and doesn't know what to do. Of course she wouldn't. So she tells herself she doesn't know. She'll tell herself that until she dies.)

*

All her furs – the sables, the chinchillas, the mink – that I've kept so carefully. The golden coverlet, the velvet dress, they can't keep her warm.

Can they?

No. Unless...

There is only one thing to do, and even this is not enough. It will never be enough. All the fire in the world could not warm her. All this house can only make a little light against this dark, dark night. All the brightness, the beauty, that was hers – gone.

What I do, can do nothing. All the same, I have no choice but to do it.

*

The first match caught with a scratch and a sharp bright glare. So did the next one, and the next, and the next.


End file.
